Making the most of Facebook

Stuart: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart here joined by Betsy. Betsy, how are you doing?

Guest: I'm fantastic. Good morning.

Stuart: How's it going across there in sunny Florida?

Guest: It is sunny this morning. That's a good thing. We've had a lot of rain, time

Stuart: for a break and get outdoors. It's actually pretty nice across here in the UK as well at the moment. We recorded on site Saturday morning and I'd kind of slightly mistimed going to the gym today so I didn't get back long before we started recording so people might have heard before. I work at a standing desk as well, so if I sound slightly out of breath, it's part excitement of recording and part exhaustion from cutting it a bit fine getting back from the gym.

Guest: There you go.

Stuart: We've got an exciting call today. So we talked about it briefly a few weeks ago before we got onto the. Onto the back to back book promotion episode that we did. So we were talking about social media and people talking about advertising the book on Facebook or using it in different groups. So today we're going to talk about the promoting your book across various different channels on the Internet once you've got it created and written, how you can get it in front of the right people at the right time and hopefully in the right way to start those conversations. If anyone hasn't listened to last Week's episode which was 00:28, recommend jumping back into that. So that was a great one I recorded with Dean. We were talking about the follow on and engaging people in the conversation after they've requested a copy of the book. So how you can structure emails to guide the conversation to a next step. So anyone that's not listened to that yet, jump back either either now or after the show and listen to that one. Because these two together are really going to be a nice feed. Last one we were talking about that engaging conversation and this one talking about getting people to raise their hands and opt in a little bit more. So should be a good show.

Guest: Fantastic. I'm looking forward to it.

Stuart: Perfect. So I thought we'd start with Facebook. It's pretty much probably the biggest platform that most people listening to this are going to use. We'll touch on some of the other smaller networks afterwards. But I would imagine that the majority of people listening in now either have a business page on Facebook or perhaps they use in their personal profile. They might have done something with advertising in Facebook's ads. And there's been quite a lot of developments there which we'll touch on briefly. Briefly. But Facebook's probably the platform that people are most familiar with or have the biggest footprint on. So I know that when you've been speaking to guys and girls coming in at the front end, a lot of those guys have some sort of presence in Facebook already. I think you were talking about the Confident Painter book a couple of weeks ago.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: Facebook profile there, that. That was really quite a presence. And would you agree it definitely seems to be the most popular platform that people talk about.

Guest: Right. I see. You know, I typically will look at our clients and see how they're using it or see if I see if they've tagged us in something or, you know, get up and try to follow them a little bit, you know, from a professional standpoint and see what people are doing and how they're using things. But speaking of the competent painter she has really, Rachel has definitely used, you know, that this platform, Facebook. I don't know so much about the others, you know, like Instagram and such, but definitely Facebook. She has a great presence. She does a great job. Not just with her book, with her business in general, you know, putting out enough content. You know, it's always that fine line of, is there too much content? Or, you know, am I posting too much? Are people going to get tired of this? Or what have you? But she does a really great job. I've enjoyed. There's no way, shape or form I'm going to be painting anything on my own anytime soon. But I like the information that, you know, she puts out, and I find it useful should I ever go down that route or somebody, I hear somebody talking about it. But she's really. It's sort of, you know, she did the book and she's put herself out there, and I see how she's just sort of exploded, you know, on social media. And I think things are even bigger coming for her. I really see that. And she and I had this conversation when she was in Orlando recently at one of Dean's events. And I really see that because she's a dynamic personality. She's doing a lot of speaking engagements and such. And so she's really, really great about promoting herself and her brand on social media. Some of our other clients might just post once every, you know, couple of weeks or maybe. Here's my book. I wrote this book kind of thing. Not as dynamic as what, you know, what Rachel has done, for example.

Stuart: Yeah. And I think that hits a good point because there is an element of individual comfort or capability, both in times, in terms of the nature of the thing that you can put out there and the time that you've got to do it. So all of these social platforms, it's very difficult to be present across all of them in a way that engages all of the different audiences and the nature of each of them is very slightly different. So if you do favor one over another, if you've got a footprint in one over another already, then definitely leveraging the work that you're already doing is probably going to be far more beneficial than starting something brand new. Unless for whatever reason there's a particularly strong draw or pull into that new market. So with a Facebook page, if you're putting stuff out there already, adding the book to that mix and having the book as a kind of a tent pole referral destination is going to work much better than if you're not particularly active in it. And then just every now and then you're pushing something up that is really just a promotional piece saying, hey, go and grab a copy of this. If you haven't been doing anything to engage that audience, audience beforehand. I think for there's a couple of different elements to Facebook, it's probably worth going into each of them briefly. Of course, like all of these things, we're trying to cover this in a, in a 30 minute podcast. So on whichever one of these elements sort of resonates with you or you've got a presence in already that you want to develop, there's lots of further reading on the subject and the tools change all the time as well. So definitely we're not aiming to be a provider. An answer here. This is really a, a touch point, the kind of high level view and then you can go in and dig into it a little bit more. Some of the resources that you might want to look at are like Ryan Dice's digital marketer area for all of the Facebook. A lot of the Facebook techniques and strategies that they use are very useful and they've got quite a, a big team there to keep on top of those changes. Following what Gary Vaynerchuk's doing on social media, not only kind of what he's teaching or suggesting, but actually what he does himself, that's a great way. Not so much probably on Facebook maybe, but on some of the other platforms. So finding someone that already has a lead in your marketplace, seeing what they're doing and then being inspired by those guys and, and seeing what you can do similarly is, is probably a good strategy. And starting small with something is probably better than trying to get overwhelmed with the. The totality of what it could be, just doing something is, Is going to move the needle in a positive direction.

Guest: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great. Excuse me.

Stuart: Because it can become overwhelming, can't it? I mean, we see it even with trying to stay on top of the Facebook channel that we've got, it's very difficult sometimes.

Guest: Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: If it's not front of mind, if there isn't a strong procedure and process that means you keep it updated. It's very challenging to just remember to do it, if nothing else. So anything that you can do to build those processes in. So going forward, people will see just on our Facebook channel, particularly the number of things that we're sharing there is, has increased already and is increasing going forward as we change certain practices and procedures. So we're better now at promoting the podcast when that comes on some of the book covers and what other people are doing. We've changed the processes slightly internally. So the images that we've got to work with are a little bit more engaging and they're in a place that's easy to grab. So when we do think about needing to update something on Facebook, it's then not a chat challenge to go and find something or create something in order to put there. Hopefully all of these assets are in the right place, ready for. Ready for us to grab. And anything that you can do as you listen to this in your own business to collect those things so it's there, ready to go at the time that you've got some time and attention to focus on it. Again, all of these little tricks and tactics to streamline the process to ease it is just going to help. And equally, you don't have to do this yourself. It may well be worth the investment to find another resource to do it either internally within the team, by. By switching some priorities around giving someone the task, or by finding someone external to the organization that's. That has an interest in the capability of doing this. It might well be worth that effort and linking it all back to the book. The book is then a great way of having a. A temple destination. So as you're posting or commenting on other things, one in every three thing that you're talking about might be relevant to the book and having that as a. Something that you can refer back to. So kind of adding the value of the post that you're making. Here's a brief answer. And there's more available freely here, here being the book, then all of that builds and gives you just more, more assets, more tools in Your tool belt to ultimately capture the leads and start the conversation.

Guest: Absolutely. You know, we were talking. You said something that made me think about, you know, because with our organization, there are certain things that I put on, on social media, on Facebook, and there's certain things that you do. I do most of the books, you do the podcast. But I have found, and I have a lot of. Sometimes I talk to some of a certain generation of our clients that say, oh, no, no, yeah, that's too much work. I don't want to get on. I don't want to get on that, that, that stuff that Facebook, you know, or the Facebook or, you know, because it's just not something that's familiar or comfortable to them.

Stuart: Facebook on the Internet.

Guest: Yeah, exactly. So. And then others who take, gosh, every time I get on Facebook, I get distracted and I forget what I'm doing. And I understand that. So what I do and I didn't. And I'm not Facebook savvy. I mean, really and truly, like I. My personal page, I just go on, I look at stuff and I don't know all the tricks of the trade, you know, across the board. So I'm pretty, pretty simple minded when it comes to it. But I found that feature recently that allows you to schedule posts. And so instead of having to do something every single day, you can take one block of time and just set it up to post, you know, if you want to do every other day or every day or whatever. And it'll set it up for you so you're not spending so much time going onto the Facebook, getting distracted, you know, forgetting what you're doing. And that's one of the things that I shared that with someone. I mean, I was very proud of myself personally, because I was like, I can't believe this exists, you know, and then I shared that with someone who was one of our older clients, older than me, and he was like, this is the greatest. I mean, it was like I just discovered sliced bread or something. Because he was just like, oh, that's fantastic. I didn't know you could do that. So, you know, there's those, there's little things like that. And you're always giving me little tips and telling me things that you're able to see and do with Facebook. But that's just a simple thing. You can block out, you know, 15 minutes your time, do all your posting, set them up as much as you want, you know, and boom, it's already, it's already finished for you, you know, for the week or two. Weeks or whatever. So little.

Stuart: And that links back into the whole book premise. I mean, that's relatively straightforward thing that you might assume that other people would know. A lot of people don't know. So just turn it back into the whole principle of the nightmare book. It's very easy to underestimate your own knowledge because I don't know that I've ever. I think you find that yourself. I don't think I told you about that scheduling, but that would be one of the things that fell into the category of, well, surely everyone knows that. And I might not have mentioned it thinking that you were aware of it already. So just going back to the whole, the whole benefit of the 90 minute book and the ease of writing a book that helps people take those first steps, solve those early problems and start a conversation. Again, super easy to overestimate what other people know and undervalue your own opinion or your own knowledge that because you're in it all the time, might seem super straightforward so you would just skip over it.

Guest: Yeah, that's a great point. Absolutely.

Stuart: Yeah, definitely one of the other tools. And I just realized that we're probably about quarter of an hour into the 30 minute show and barely off the first, the first point. Again, I might have to make these shows a little bit longer. But yeah, the other point on scheduling and keeping your time and attention focused on the job in hand and limiting distractions, there are services like Buffer is one of the biggest ones that will allow you to schedule posts external to the service itself. So there's a free tier for connecting a small number of accounts and then paid tiers for connecting a larger number of accounts. But it's, it's relatively easy to go in, connect up all your social profiles and then schedule things without actually having to go into the app itself. There's pros and cons to it. You don't get access to all of the features, but certainly if you're looking at starting and you're concerned about getting distracted, or maybe you're giving it this access to another person or another party and potentially don't want to have them distracted, you just really want to keep them focused on the task. If it's a member of staff, then giving them access to something like Buffer and asking them to schedule things via that tool rather than via the. The services directly, that might be an option as well. So there's always ways of working around it. I think the biggest thing, if you're. Like we said when we started, if you're not present in that environment Already it can be a bit of a cognitive load or an overhead going in and trying to build that into a habit life. Trying to build a presence that you're doing. It's, it's a different job of work. We're not just then talking about using your book as a tool in an environment that you're already playing. It's building a presence in that environment as well, which is difficult. And I think the thing that I would advise people there is to only do that if there's a very clear outcome in mind. So, for example, Snapchat is a very, very popular social media tool, an environment. It's definitely demographically skewed one particular way. So that way might not be that beneficial for your business. Now the thing to be aware of is that in five years time you might be late to the party and then you're playing catch up. So always kind of balance it out against that. But LinkedIn, similarly smaller social platform, pretty skewed to B2B rather than B2C. So again, you might not want to worry too much about that platform if that's not the, the market that you're going for. But each of those platforms have got other benefits. So with that in mind, I'm going to crack on a little bit and move through some of these, these other channels. Okay, so Facebook then we talk about three or four particular areas within Facebook. So the main thing that most people are probably familiar with is their own profile. So your own profile is the thing that you set up when you first go into the system. Pretty much everything relies on having a profile. Everyone. It's not strictly true. I was going to say everyone to see your profile needs to be a friend, but that's not strictly true. Typically though, engaging with a profile means that you become friends and everyone sees everything. Now, officially you're not supposed to have a business running as a profile. And Facebook are very keen to separate profiles from pages and pages then being a business presence. So a business presence, a page can either represent a company or person or a celebrity or a brand or a product or an organization, a charity. A Page can be based around many different things, but the main different to bear in mind is that a page is different from a, from an individual profile. Pages have access to different things and are promoted in different ways. Mainly it comes down to the discoverability to a certain point and then the advertising platform. So there's a number of things that you can do with pages that you can't do with profiles. So the typical advice is, particularly if you're setting something up from new. So it's not like you've got a big presence that you're trying to migrate elsewhere. But the usual advice is if you're posting as a. As a company, as an entity, then you want to be doing that as a page rather than as your profile. The other thing that you could have is a group. So you can set up groups which are more discussion groups around a certain topic or subject. They're typically more open, although you can lock them down. And those groups are really to facilitate a conversation more than a page is typically more to broadcast a message. Now, again, not strictly true. There are crossovers obviously between them. It's not just a black and white thing. But groups are more for discussions. And that might be a very good way, particularly if there's a gap, goes back to a little bit like the meetup conversation we were talking about four or five episodes ago, saying if there's a target audience out there who are desperate for information in the meetup sense, particularly if they're geographically located, but in the Facebook sense, obviously there doesn't have to be a geographic element to it. But starting a group to talk about a particular subject might be a great way of engaging the audience of people who are going to be your target customers. So I was talking to Jim Hacking yesterday, who's one of our authors who's written a couple of books. So he's an immigration lawyer specializing in Muslim immigration. He's been doing that for four or five years, but obviously in the last four or five months, or six to 12 months, I guess that's become much more of a hot topic. So their Facebook group, which was already relatively active, has become a bit more of a central source of. Of information because people are desperate for that information and, and clarity and certainty and. And then lay one on top all the emotions. So it doesn't have to be as charged as that. And certainly two years ago it wasn't as charged as that. But that group, that environment is still very valuable to him and his professional business because that group of people he's able to help is the exact group of people who would be ideal customers. And whether or not any of them turn into customers or not, he still gets a lot of value from contributing to that conversation because just like the model of the book there, being the leader of the group adds authority and it gets you in conversations with real people, opens up doors that wouldn't necessarily open up before and leads to conversations that you wouldn't necessarily be aware of. So Facebook group Is, is potentially something that you might want to look at starting. If you want to kind of own or coordinate. If you like that conversation, that's a great idea. I think it just allows you to be present in the marketplace. So just like the conversations that you have with people as they're thinking of coming on board, the questions that they've got in the first place, all of that exposure to the questions that are being asked enables you to have your fingers on the pulse, basically because you're the person dealing with all the questions at that level. So I think it really gives you the opportunity to be in the conversations that are going on.

Guest: For sure. Yeah. That's great. I do get asked a lot, like how they utilize their Facebook and I give the best I can. If they don't have a business page, we usually start there. Let's go through that first. Which is important and almost surprising that in this day and age that people wouldn't have a business page. But they're always looking for more, more ideas, different ideas, what to do. And there's so many of our clients who could benefit from a Facebook group with some of the subjects that we cover, the topics that we do. It's definitely something I think I'll recommend a little bit more, look into a few more and recommend that to some of these authors because they are looking for something, looking for ways to promote themselves. And like you said, it may not turn into a customer, but there's value there that they're putting out there and we hear that a lot from our clients. Like I just want to get this information out there to people, you know. Yeah. Ideally building their client base would, would be, you know, what they want ultimately, you know, build that business. But you know, just to get some information out there is helpful as well. So I think I'll recommend that.

Stuart: Back to the kind of flagship communication that was talking about with Dean last week. Sharing the information, once someone raises their hand and gets on your list, treating them as a five star prospect until they evidence themselves that they're not. All of this broadcast type communication channel. So whether that's the broadcast, emails that are being sent out or discussions in a group, although that's slightly more, I still consider that as broadcast because it's not one to one communication in so much as it's one to many. Everyone's seeing the answer. There's one person asking the question, but many people are seeing the answer. So the person asking the question, it's a one to one relationship, but you responding. Although on the one hand you want to respond to the individual in a way as if they were stood just in front of you. So one to one in that sense, but also with the knowledge that it's being broadcast to a broader group, more people are knowing about it. So the ability to share that message, to leverage your time and attention, because that one question is probably going to answer many people's questions. It's just that people haven't raised their hand. So it's a great way of with, with limited extra effort to get some leverage on the answers that you're giving. It's a bit like the Mortis Less Whiskers podcast. Again, if anyone doesn't listen to that at the moment, I think probably the majority of people do, but. And the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast that Dean does. So each week there's an hour convers with someone who has raised their hand as saying, hey, let's get on the call for an hour. Talk about hatching some evil schemes, mainly based around the eight profit activators, which we've talked extensively about here. It really ties in the, the first profile 1, 2 and 3 really tie in with the book as a, as a mechanism for engaging people. But that Mortgages Whiskers podcast came about from the conversations that we were having with people anyway. The answers were valuable to others. So then taking that and turning that into a conversation that's recorded and then shared with other people, so much value is being taken from that. So again, like with, with Rachel with the confident painter or Jim with the immigration books, or I'm just looking down on the gallery now and, and seeing some of the other recent ones that are in here. So, I mean, even Victor. So I think, think Victor's going to be on More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast either this week or next week, I forget which. But Victor wrote the errands law solution. You can imagine a group specifically for those people who are affected by that legislation, that requirement.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: So whether that was in Facebook or LinkedIn, possibly because it's. That's slightly more B2B kind of. It's probably borderline, maybe that one. So Facebook might be the right answer. But imagine starting a group of people who are talking about implementing that requirement, then owning that community, assuming it doesn't, it doesn't exist elsewhere, adding value into it, it really drives a bigger awareness of the subject. So you're out there helping. Plus it gives you direct access to the audience of people who are way more likely to be customers than the average population who isn't a member of the group.

Guest: Absolutely. Yeah.

Stuart: So the next one. And I just looked at the clock again and we're gonna get through the first of these. Obviously. I was on the Maximum Lawyer podcast yesterday running through the book, some book ideas for some lawyers. And I'd written out for some reason I had in my mind it was a 45 minute show. They actually go for 30 minutes as well. So jumped on the call with those guys, had written out a whole load of notes over the days running up to it and had got a little bit carried away with the amount of content. So the kind of stereotype is that guys are very poor at judging size. That completely goes for the amount of content that you think you can squeeze into a podcast as well, because I must have had about seven shows worth of stuff. So that one, actually I'll link to that in if it's up, I'll link to it in the show notes of this episode. What I recorded there to not waste all of the effort that we did in writing the outline. I've got that in a mind map because that's how I tend to work. I tend to put everything in mind maps and then go from there. I had that mind map and then recorded over the top of it a walkthrough of the mind map. So some of it was a repetition of the 30 minutes of that show, but it was in the mind map. It's just slightly more structured and visual on the screen. So at the end of the Maximum Lawyer podcast, pointed people back to this page and then said, obviously we only had 30 minutes, couldn't go through everything. So for those that are interested, we've got a walkthrough going through all of this that we've talked about and the other elements that we didn't get time to run through. So I mean that as well as an idea is going slightly off subject now, but that as an idea is also great for anyone who is writing their book. There's probably going to be things that aren't included because they're either slightly off subject or you don't get time to cover them. Or it's an element that's kind of slightly parallel to the main subject but still valuable. So we often talk about what's the follow up sequence as you're trying to engage people on the back of the book. We sometimes suggest, or we often suggest that they give people an easy way to get started. What's the kind of minimum viable commitment, next step, and then a kind of a mafia offer that's. That's compelling and hard to refuse to really get started now. But that middle step, that, that minimum viable commitment step might be taking some of that content. So there's never any reason, I don't think, to throw away stuff that you've already done. There's always a way of leveraging it into an asset that, that is complementary to the main thing that you're doing and provide it in a different way. Because although when you talk about words in the book, sometimes less is more and kind of cut to the point. But in the broader context, if there's a way of delivering people more value, and even if that more value is the same information but displayed in a different way, there's always opportunities to leverage what you've already done and share that with people outside of the book, in this instance or the podcast in instance yesterday.

Guest: I think that would be a good subject to dive into a little bit more because I know again, we're sort of off subject here, but real fast, people come to me a lot and say, oh, I've done this webinar, I've done this presentation, I've done this call, and I really want to use this in my book. And with our process, it's better to use our process not to. To use those assets. And so that is always our suggestion. But I think if we could dive into that at some point a little bit more specifically on each one of those topics, oh, I have a webinar. How can we do that? You've had some great ideas in the past that we have shared with our clients and that would be very interesting to our audience.

Stuart: Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Let's build that into one of the shows over the next couple of weeks and dive into that. Because I think it's always the case that sometimes when we say to people, oh, well, you should do this instead, or this is a better way of doing it, there is a feeling of, well, I've done all of this work. There's a feeling of waste, as if we're suggesting that it's thrown away. But that's far from what we're suggesting. We're just saying that there's a more effective way of doing this particular job here, rather than trying to shoehorn something else into the mold and force a square peg into a round hole, then do this here and then leverage all of the other things as well. So, yeah, let's definitely. I've just taken a note of that. Yeah, do that deep dive on that in a couple of weeks time. So to wrap up The Facebook one we just blasted past 30 minutes. So let's wrap up the Facebook one. We can do some of the other social channels in the next show and then we can hit the using the other assets as one after that. Otherwise, I'm saying that of course when people hear this, that order will be slightly out of order because we've got a couple of guests, previous authors coming on to run through. They've used it. So it's. Yeah, this is podcast time frame, not real time frame. Right, so finish off on Facebook then. So we've touched on already really profiles, pages and groups. The other three things that I want to touch on briefly is events, ads and Facebook's lead ads, which is slightly different subset of ads. So events, if you're in a physical location, then something like a meetup running through some topics which are related to the book. Use the book as the giveaway at the end or the draw for people to download something prior to an event. But hosting a physical meetup for something that's happening that people are interested in is a great way of adding value back in. So across in the UK here work quite closely with the osteopathic clinic in Croydon is which. Which is a big multidiscipline sports therapy. Osteopathy, can't speak osteopathy company, so they hold a couple of events, nutritional based ones because they have a doctor working with them who's a dietitian. That's not strictly related to the osteopathy or the Pilates or the shockwave side of the practice, but it's very related to the group of people that they're interested in talking to. So health and wellness and dietary conditions, very popular subject. They've hosted a number of talks about it. Run Facebook ads within the local geographic area to engage with people who are going to be interested. Also sent out to their existing client list and then use that as a way to add more value back into the community and start a conversation. We used Facebook events ads for the book titles workshop that we ran a couple of weeks ago. So again, it doesn't necessarily have to be a physical event, but using Facebook as a way of advertising something that draws it in allows you to leverage their demographic platform to tie in with something that you might be doing anyway, like a call or a webinar or a physical session in a place. So events are always a good thing to think about because it gives you access to. It's just another. Another road in rather than just an ad saying get a copy of the book. Why not say we're doing a, a reading or workshop, talking about this one particular topic, this one particular chapter in the book. Free to attend. Just need to RSVP here. And then gives you an opportunity to capture the leads, capture the details and start that conversation with people after the event. Because you've started the conversation in a good way by helping them talk through the subject.

Guest: Right. You know, I've noticed on Facebook lately something that's really gotten. And I would say celebrity types are used. The new Facebook is not that new, but the Facebook Live feature, a lot of people, you know, I see like a lot of people in different industries that I follow on social media that are, you know, I guess it's celebrity type. They're using those. Like a lot of promotion of, hey, every morning 6am I'm here live taking your questions, you know, or every certain people, every Tuesday at noon, what have you. Those are. And it's a lot of valuable information, you know, for the subject matter. You know, it's a way to engage, you know, people. And I'm seeing a lot of, I think one of the girls that I follow who sort of, I don't know if you would call her, she's sort of a vlogger, but she's really expanded her brand tremendously in the last year and is big on social media. Just I've watched how her following has exploded, you know, and it's just simple, simple. You know, she spends about 30 minutes taking questions. People are typing in questions and just seeing how that has, has really worked for people. And people are, you know, they're buying her products, they're coming to her speaking engagements, they're doing all those things, you know, based just on, basically. I mean, she's done it all through social media, but specifically these live chats has been really successful for her.

Stuart: And it's too fantastic. Yeah, there's two fantastic elements to that. One is that that takes as long as you're comfortable in front of the camera. Then that takes very, very little effort. Because if you think back, I mean, even just five years, maybe even a bit less than that to try and set something up like that, super, super difficult because the technology didn't exist. And if the. Where the technology did exist, it was expensive and needed a lot of sticking together with either more tools or a lot of sticky tape to get it to work. So it's super easy now to. You create a lot of unique content, answering questions that are the most valuable questions because people are asking them there and then. And in a way that is supporting the platform's requirements. So Facebook wanted to get into the live streaming stuff to counter Instagram. We're doing the same, although Instagram, Facebook, same thing. But Snapchat and those services, Periscope and Meerkat, all of those live video streaming services that, that there was a huge spike in popularity. Facebook didn't want to YouTube live now as well. All of them don't want to miss the boat on these things. So you get an extra amount of, of promotion, an extra amount of juice pushed into what you're doing if what you're doing supports the platform's goals as well. So one of the pet peeves or bugs about Facebook is regardless of how many people like the page, if you don't do anything to pay for promotion on a post, the reach is actually pretty small because they want to encourage you to pay money to promote the post. Of course.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Video, because in particular live video, because they really wanted to push that on the platform. There was far, far more organic distribution of that because you were supporting the platform's goals as well. So it's a fantastic way of, of watching what the platforms are doing and then doing something that also supports their goals. Because you're going to get more, more bang for your buck doing that versus trying to fight the system and just complaining that you're not getting much reach on a post that is just text. I think it comes down to comfort and convenience as well. Like we were saying before, it's. Or familiarity, maybe if it's something that you're familiar with and you're comfortable doing and perhaps you do it already, it almost becomes very easy and straightforward to do rather than a big mental overhead of, oh, God, now I've got to get in front of this camera. And it's difficult. I don't know what I'm going to say. But if it is something you comfortable with, super, super easy to execute on because it's very, very little overhead. Fantastic.

Guest: Yeah. You know what? I find this interesting. Like, some people will set a set location, their office, their studio, whatever. But people are so comfortable. People who are so comfortable are another level of comfort. They will be in the airport, doing their live chat, walking through the airport, doing their live chat. They're at the mall, they're in their live chat, they're wherever they are, they will just stop and do these live live chats and live videos and stuff. And I think, you know, that is so new. I mean, I, you know, you know, as we travel around, we see people and it's like, oh, somebody's doing a true life, you know, conversation with other people, you know, around the world, essentially, you know, wherever you are, you know, the convenience of doing these things, you know, you don't have to schedule time to be at a set location now. You know, if you have your phone, you can do it. You know, it's very simple, very easy.

Stuart: And that convenience, I mean. So Dean does I do very little video because it's not something that pops into my mind. It's just really, there's just no habit life around it at all. It's just not something that I think about. And I don't tend to consume that much video stuff either. But I consume hours and hours worth of podcasts every week and I'm more than happy and comfortable and convenient just doing. You could turn a mic on in front of me and I'd more than happily talk about this, as we can probably tell, 45 minutes in. But so tying in what you want to do with what you're comfortable with doing is a great way of not making it too much mental overhead. So if video isn't your thing, again with the caveat of, like we said before, there's always a risk that in five years time you'll find yourself behind the curve of what everyone else is doing. But with that being said, particularly if you're getting started, just find the thing that's comfortable. So there are audio channels as well, which is similar to Facebook, sorry, live video streaming, they don't tend to get as much airtime, but they're definitely out there. So services like Anchor and soundcloud, where it's easy to upload short audio rather than just video, that's definitely an option as well. As I say, the only difference is, or at the moment is the kind of viral effect and the platform promotional effect of services like YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Snapchat, they're all very keen on promoting video and you do get that organic boost they won't necessarily get from other platforms. But it shouldn't be at the expense or the overhead of driving yourself to distraction to do it. But if it is something you're comfortable with, like you said, I mean, even, even a few years ago, this would be super simple. But as he said now just your regular phone is more than adequate to get this done.

Guest: Yeah, perfect.

Stuart: Okay, so talking about getting it done, the last two things on the list were just ads and Facebook lead ads. So the only quick thing I want to mention on there is that Facebook does have a text per ad cap on the ads that they'll allow you to promote because it's a relatively visual platform, it is a constraint. Now the good thing about a book cover is a book has a specific exclusion from that quota. So I think the guidelines are about. I think they've upped it slightly recently, but it's about 20% text image. The book cover is discounted from that. So because you've got a title on your book that really asks the question in the title. It's a great way of having post that also has a book cover in it is a great way of kind of sneaking some extra words, sneaking a message in below this cap that otherwise affects everyone else. And the worst case scenario is the ad wouldn't get run. The best the middle case scenario is it would get run but far lower distribution or more expensive. Whereas a book cover being excluded from this. It's a great way of sneaking extra message under the radar. And then the last one to mention is Facebook lead ads which are relatively new. So this allows people to opt in directly from the ad. So there's no. We need to add an additional to ask additional questions, although you can if you want to. But there's a way of capturing name and email addresses just straight from the ad rather than having to direct people off to a landing page. So that's something to look into as well. Facebook lead ads. And as I said when we started, there's a lot of information out there talking about how to best implement those, but very good. There we go. So I think we are probably just about done for today. Yeah, hopefully we've given people some great information about Facebook. We'll touch on the other social networks in a show in the not too distant future. Facebook, I think was probably the right one to hit first because it's probably got the widest distribution of people who are typically going to be listening into this. Anything on that that you think we've missed?

Guest: No, I think we. I think we got it. I think people probably are interested maybe a little bit on the other how to use some of the other social media platforms. I think that would be a good conversation to have. Touch on those. You know the other ones I use in air quotes there. So yeah, definitely we could touch on that at another time.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, in that case then we will wrap up if there's anything Facebook specific that we've met that we've missed. Obviously this was a bit of a high level intro to everything, so if you do have any questions more specifically, then feel free to just shoot us an email to podcast at 90 Minute Books and we'll wrap that up into a follow up show in the future. If the there's any of the other social networks, the ones that I've got on the list here to cover a really kind of Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat and all of those, a bit of a lighter touch than Facebook. But then we're also going to quickly talk about some of the online communities and AdWords briefly. So if there's anything specifically that you're interested that wasn't just read out in that list again, shoot us a message through to podcast at 9 Minute Books and we will see if we can get that included. So the show notes for this are going to be on our website as always. So head over to 90minutebooks.com podcast and this is episode 29. If you're ready to get started again, head over to the website, just follow the get started links and we'll be here waiting to help you get your book written and then ultimately out on one of the social channels.

Guest: There you go.

Stuart: Okay, thanks for your time again, Betsy. I will catch you next week.

Guest: Take care,

Stuart: Sam.